Death Note: Shallow Victory
by Tower of Babel
Summary: Kidnapped, Light trades wits with a Yakuza drug enforcer. To prove his mantle that he can take on a case without using the Death Note, he joins a drug squad, but he gets more than he bargained for. {COMPLETED}


**SHALLOW VICTORY**

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><p>The heavy set man struck Light across the face with the back of his hand. The man looked like a bouncer from a high profiled nightclub, he was hefty and muscular with a shaven head. He was a member of the Yakuza crime syndicate, whom the N.P.A. (National Police Agency) had been trying to take down for years in Japan.<p>

Light recoiled from the impact, his head sent careening to the right. The left side of his mouth bled from a deep cut; his face was battered and bruised. Light turned back after the hit. His left eye was partially shut, swelled by continuous excessive blunt trauma. The man had struck him repeatedly for information.

Light refused to talk.

Light was tied to a chair bolted to the floor. His hands were wrapped behind him and his ankles bound to the legs with thin electrical wire. He was in a dusky, darkened, empty room. There were no windows, and he could not see a door. He had been kidnapped when the Yakuza eliminated all the members of a SWAT team he was on, consulting. He had also been shot in the shoulder, which hurt like hell.

Asked to assist in what was supposed to be a relatively easy bust at the harbor docks of smuggled drugs, and to obtain a little on the field training, he set aside the Kira case, and allowed the taskforce to handle everything for the duration he'd be gone, no more than a couple of days.

He was the N.P.A.'s top Intelligence agent, and the SWAT team wanted his expertise for Intel before the bust. He was only supposed to provide information, but he opted to join the SWAT team in the field because the Kira case was taxing his boredom.

The Kira taskforce agreed to his decision, as they thought he was looking a tired working on the same case day after day, and that this would provide some variety.

_They're fools,_ Light had thought. Soon he would rule as a god and they would all be dead. But he needed to string them along for just a little while longer, at least for Near's sake.

Near, L's successor, and leader of the SPK (the Special Provision for Kira) was still after him under the belief that Light was Kira. Of course, the teen genius was correct. Evidence was another thing, however, and Near had nothing but suppositions. Light was always a step ahead of him. There were those on the taskforce who played into Near's theory that Light was Kira, but they didn't have any proof either, and Light gave them no cause for such.

Still, he had gotten himself into a lot of trouble with the drug bust. And now all the agents involved had been killed, and the Yakuza had taken his cell phone and all other devices in which he could use to contact help, so there was no way for the others, meaning the Kira taskforce, to track his whereabouts with the 'call sharing system' that he had adapted from L's assistant Watari years back, or even via GPS.

The heavy set man hit Light again across the face with a right cross. The chair wobbled beneath Light by the impact and his recoil from the hit, but he settled it, and Light turned back to face him the large man with a blood wily smile.

"Tell me what I want to know or I'll kill you," the man demanded.

"Oh, if you only knew who I am," Light breathed out softly.

"You're a cop, nothing else." The man grabbed Light's chin, cupping it, straightened it, looked directly into Light's eyes. Light grunted from the hold but he stared back at the man with hate, and if looks could kill, Light's eyes would've killed the man forthwith.

"You think you're so smart," the man continued. "We knew of your raid ahead of time."

Light knew that had happened. It didn't take a genius to figure that out.

Light recalled the man's face. He had at one time been in league with Mello, Near's friend and orphan at Whammy's House, Watari's orphanage for gifted children. Mello branched out into his own operation to catch Kira hiring thugs and enforcers to do his dirty work. It was like a competition between Near and Mello.

Light had seen the Yazaka enforcer's face on the FBI's most wanted list. The man had been nothing more than a thug, now, however, Light wasn't so sure. Here, the man showed a hidden intelligence that was not in his FBI profile.

Light spit blood into the man's face. The man recoiled, disgusted, releasing Light. The man wiped his face, looking at the blood on his hand. Then he laughed. "You're unlike any cop I've encountered, you have balls." He then leaned back, closer than he had been before, staring again into Light's eyes. "But if you spit on me again, I'll make sure you no longer have any left."

The man cupped a fist and went for Light's crotch as if to punch it, but then laughed.

Light had recoiled from the punch, but then sneered with hate when the man had fooled him with a fake; Light's blood covered teeth showing.

The man laughed again.

The man straightened, and looked at a gun that sat on a near by standard wooden rectangular table. It was Light's personal gun seized, taken when Light was first captured, and held it as if about to use it, his finger inserted into the trigger hole. He held the weapon aloft, admiring it. It was a black gloc crafted with silver enclave designs.

A man Light once knew, a former NPA officer, told Light to get a gun he was most comfortable with. To Light, the standard police issue felt clumsy to him, so he opted for a gun specially crafted to his specifications. It was light in weight and the firing ratio was much faster.

"Very nice. Interesting weapon. Not your standard Japanese police issue. Custom made." The man caressed the barrel. "I'm not your typical Yakuza enforcer, as you may have already guessed."

Light had deduced that already. This man was more than he appeared. Not only was an enforcer but also an interrogator, but the FBI had improperly profiled him based solely on his appearance and association with Mello.

The man pointed the gun at Light, the barrel of the gun pointed between Light's eyes. But Light knew he wouldn't fire. Light still had information the man needed.

Light refused to the threat, and if amused, the man then quickly shifted the position of the gun and jabbed the barrel into Light's shoulder.

Light cried out. It was exactly the reaction the man wanted. He was there to cause pain.

The pain was excruciating for Light as the man pushed the barrel further in, turning it around to get depth, pushing the bullet still embedded inside further.

The man asked again, information that he wanted. But Light refused to tell him anything despite the horrid pain.

But then the man stopped, pulled back.

"I'm going to kill you! I swear it!" Light said. "By Kira as my witness, you won't see another sunrise!"

The man took a few steps back, as if seeing a devil in Light's eyes.

Misa had the Death Note, Light knew. But there was a piece hidden in his watch. If he could only get at it, the man was dead. But it was struggle to wiggle space for his hands free from the wire binds around his wrists.

"You're a fighter," the man said with chuckle. "It's going to be fun to break you."

"You can forget it! I'll never tell you anything!"

The man put the gun back on the table. "Then you'll die, right here. There's no one coming for you. So stop believing you're going to be rescued. No one knows where you are. All your tracking devices have been neutralized. They can't even track you with satellites. And I know there are no tracers in your blood."

Light smirked despite the circumstances.

"What's so funny?" the man said.

"You have no idea what you've done." _All I need to do is to reach my watch,_ Light thought. He stretched his right hand and pulled the side pin three times. The hidden panel ejected. "I'm going to kill you."

"I've never known a cop more resilient than you."

"I'll take that as a compliment." Light felt for the pin in the hidden panel and pricked his forefinger drawing blood. Feeling the paper, he slowly wrote the man's name down recalling it from the FBI profile. He knew it wasn't an alias. Light wrote it carefully, visualizing the paper. "I'll let you in on a little secret, one that only a select few know."

"Yeah, what is it? Tell me now. I'm all ears."

Light grinned sinisterly after finishing the man's name, pushing back the panel in his watch. In forty seconds, the man will die. "I am Kira."

The man laughed. "You? Kira? Now that's rich! If you were Kira, you could have killed me instantly. He's like some sort of god. . ." The man leaned in closer, eyeing Light as if to challenge his proclamation. "You're nothing but a cop, and one who sits on his ass in front of a computer all day. An Intelligence Agent who wanted glory in the field. We know who you are, Light Yagami. Wanted a thrill, did you? Bored with your normal day job? Well, it's going to cost you. You should've just stayed safe. It's a dangerous world out here, kiddo. Young people think they're invisible."

Light remained smiling. "I am much more than I appear, just like you and the FBI's inferior profile of you. Any last words before you die?"

The man's eyes narrowed curiously, as if Light's words rang believable to him. The man rolled his eyes, shook his head. "Like I said, I've never known a cop so resilient than you. And a stupid kid. What are you like twenty-three?"

. . .38. . .39. . .

"And you never will again! Times up!"

The man's eyes widened fully and he clutched his chest. He staggered backwards looking at Light in utter disbelief. "No...you can't be...you can't be him!"

"I am!" Light voiced godly.

The man's mouth gapped wide as he collapsed to his knees, then he fell at Light's feet dead.

Light laughed. "I am Kira, god of the new world, you fool!"

Light suddenly heard gunfire, then a door burst open in the distance destroyed by explosives, illuminating the inner warehouse like room.

Men in SWAT gear entered with guns drawn. Once the room was secured, one of the men took off his helmet as he approached Light.

It was Soichiro Yagami, his father.

"Light, are you okay?" his father asked.

Light nodded, smiling. "I'm fine, Dad. A little worse for wear, but I'll recover."

Soichiro Yagami looked at the man laying dead at Light's feet. "What happened to him?"

"Heart attack."

"Heart attack?" his father repeated.

Light assumed his father immediately thought of Kira, so he quickly redirected the conversion. "How did you find me?"

"When the SWAT team failed to call in, they sent in another; I wanted to be on the team. I was so worried when I didn't hear from you, it's been days. I didn't know if you were dead or alive. And your mother and sister were worried sick."

His father told him more about the rescue operation as they ventured outside.

Sunlight stung Light's eyes like sharp needles. A medical unit was on site, and Light's injuries were looked after.

"You'll need to visit a hospital for those cuts on your face," one of the medical technicians said to Light. The technician had put bandages over the cuts until they could properly be looked at by a more qualified professional.

"I will, thank you," Light replied.

"I'm glad you're safe, Light," Soichiro Yagami said. "I wouldn't know what to do if I lost you. Sayu is still recovering from Mello's kidnapping. Your mother is just beside herself."

"I'm going to be fine, Dad," Light smiled. "Nothing than a week or two of recuperation won't handle. After that, I'll be back with the Kira taskforce."

"You concentrate on healing. Let us deal with Kira."

Light mentally smiled, knowing that their efforts would be futile. "Sure Dad. Anything you say."

As both walked to a unmarked, black squad car, most likely the vehicle his father would use to take him to the hospital, Light mentally frowned as he looked back at a stretcher being hauled out of the warehouse by two medical personal with the dead Yazaku enforcer covered by a white sheet.

_I wanted to take a case where I wouldn't need the Death Note, something simple to prove my mantle and intelligence. _

_But I failed. _

_A criminal was killed and that is good. Kira still reigns superior. _

_But as for me, Light Yagami - I am greatly disappointed. What a shallow victory._

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><p><strong>End<strong>


End file.
